1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technology of supporting translation of a sentence from a language into another language, and more specifically to the support of translation of a sentence whose structure is relatively complicated.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, an online dictionary device, a machine translation device, a translation memory device for retrieving an appropriate translation-with-original from a translation-with-original database storing translations-with-originals, etc. have been used to support an operation of translating a sentence.
For example, a translation support device relating to a conventional technology includes a machine translation device, a translation memory device, a translation-with-original database, a data interconversion processing unit, and an interface unit. A user inputs a sentence to be translated (hereinafter referred to as an original sentence) and an instruction about translation control, and receives a translation as output of the translation support device as a reply through the interface unit. The machine translation device translates an original sentence input through the interface unit. The translation memory device obtains a translation-with-original having a portion matching a portion of an original sentence by searching a translation-with-original database using the original sentence as a sentence input for a search. The data interconversion processing unit analyzes a translation obtained by the machine translation device or a sentence translated by a user, associates the translation with the original sentence corresponding to the translation, thereby generating a translation-with-original and writing it to the translation-with-original database. Thus, the machine translation device is associated with the translation memory device, and the efficiency of a translating operation can be improved (patent literature 1).                Patent Literature 1        Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication No. 2002-278964        
However, according to the conventional technology, the support can be only realized by obtaining a partial translation in an original sentence by obtaining a translation-with-original having a portion matching a portion of the original sentence. Therefore, a user cannot obtain the translation of the entire original sentence. That is, the user has the problem that it is necessary to generate the translation of the entire original sentence by editing the partial translations while considering the sentence structure of the original sentence and combining the partial translations. The more complicated the sentence structure is, the more difficult the editing operation becomes.